Infrastructure Prime Minister

06/09/2013

This will no doubt be the last blog post before the election. It probably will not change peoples minds. And it may not get to your till the election is over. But its important.

Now the coalition have finally come in with their budget table (I wont say costings as we do not expect to ever be given these), and they are claiming a whopping 6bn improvement to the bottom line by cutting from foreign aid and from legal aid for the indigenous and of course some guestimate on boat stopping that is totally uncosted.

But the biggest cuts from the coalition come from infrastructure itself. The cut funding from all rail projects. They argue that they will provide states with a 80/20 funding arrangement between federal and states. They dislike the ALP’s 50/50 option.

Lets test the coalitions claims with two examples. A road project that costs 1bn and say a rail project that also costs 1bn.

Under the ALP plan, the federal govt pays 1bn and the states pay 1bn. Thats $500m for road and $500m for rail by both federal and state.

Under the coalition’s plan, the federal govt will now fund only the road project and only by $800m. They will spend zero on the rail project. The state on the other hand will spend $200m for the road but have to find $1bn for the rail project by itself.

This creates a burden to the states. Now add to this the coalition cuts to other state services and you can clearly see there is no way the states will be able to afford to do anything on rail at all.

I better post this up before the coalition internet filter policy which was active yesterday, then unactivated and most likely to be activated again very soon.

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…
.A. Ghebranious September 2013

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I wondered where you got to in these last days of the election campaign Ash. At least you can say you’ve given it your best shot, (‘it’ being to punch a hole through the coalition bs). I’m afraid Labor lost this rather than the coalition winning it. The good things Labor achieved have been overshadowed by too many internal errors and squabbles … and that was before reinstating Pope Rudd.

Never mind, people get what they deserve, and ‘the people’ are about to get a term or three of what they deserve. The collective myopia that has afflicted so many will soon wear off once it hits their wallets and share portfolios.